


in the wake of respite

by cagetraumasam



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Cage Trauma, Coping Mechanisms, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mental Health Issues, Season/Series 11, Season/Series 12, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 22:19:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18270350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cagetraumasam/pseuds/cagetraumasam
Summary: The thing is, every night, Sam locks his bedroom door from the inside out before he goes to bed.





	in the wake of respite

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, friends! A few things.
> 
> 1\. This was originally written for the Sam Winchester Zine, which can be found @samwinchesterzine on tumblr. The zine is digital and completely free, and full of incredible creations by and for people who love Sam Winchester.
> 
> 2\. I decided not to mark archive warnings - however, please note the tags of this piece. While the references to sexual abuse are not at all explicit, they do inform Sam's mindset during this piece. The only references I would consider to be directly addressing the sexual assault Sam endured at both Lucifer and Toni's hands are direct quotes from the show. Nonetheless, I implore you to please tread carefully and take care of yourself.
> 
> 3\. Many of the lines in parenthesis are direct quotes from the show; however, some of theme are more Sam's stream-of-consciousness thoughts.
> 
> 4\. This story was meant to be an examination of Sam's lack of agency, and in that way, it was meant to be cathartic, but it has a somewhat downer ending because that's where I imagine Sam's headspace being at the time. If you're looking for a story with a happy ending to provide comfort, this may not be the best one to read. Again, please take care of yourself. <3
> 
> That's it for now! I hope you enjoy.

Sam understands Enochian.

He doesn’t talk about it.

What he does do is—well, it’s new, or at least, more recent, but a while after they found the Bunker he took to doing this thing. It’s dumb, really. It shouldn’t be this important to him, it shouldn’t feel the same as a deep sigh after a hard run or a long day, but it is and it does.

The thing is, every night, Sam locks his bedroom door from the inside out before he goes to bed.

It wasn’t a conscious choice, he’s pretty sure, at least not in the beginning, because he can’t pinpoint exactly when he started doing it. He couldn’t help noticing, of course, not with all the times Dean tried to come barging in and griped about it when he couldn’t. Sam knows he didn’t start right away, though—when he undertook the Trials he didn’t have half the presence of mind to think about what the Bunker meant to him, but after…well.

( _i am happy with my life for the first time in forever /_ ** _so what our home’s not good enough for the hello kitty poster_** _/ this isn’t our home this is where we work / whenever i’ve tried to make a home of my own it really hasn’t ended well /_ ** _dear boy you’re all duct tape and safety pins inside_** _/ did i kill kevin_ **_no you didn’t he did_** _/ you lied to me again /_ ** _i didn’t have a choice_** _/ i was ready to die dean / i was willing to die)_

Okay, so, maybe he has _some_ idea when it started.

He knows how dumb it sounds. They’re in a heavily-warded bunker after all; he’s sure the Men of Letters wouldn’t have settled for anything substandard. Under normal circumstances, the only people (—is _people_ right for Cas, Sam’s not sure, he always get confused, and when he starts to think about vessels his head aches and his heart stutters and he has to stop—) who could possibly enter unbidden are Dean and Cas, and though they’ve all had their bumpy stretches of road, at the end of the day, he trusts them both, and what if they need him ( ** _in an emergency, Sammy?_** / _it’s sam / it’s sam / it’s sam)_ And it’s true; by all accounts, it would make more sense and be easier for everyone involved if he simply left his door unlocked at the end of the night. And yet.

Sam’s always been a man of logic and reason, and rationality can stop a lot of things, it can, but it can’t stop the dreams no matter how hard he tries. ( _being locked inside his own body and unable to scream / he has no mouth and he must scream / he thinks he read that somewhere once) (blank black spaces of time / not knowing where he was / is? / not knowing what he did / we’re always scraping to find some other explanation when maybe it’s just me / maybe i’m never gonna actually be alright /_ **_we’ll figure it out_ ** _/ or this is just how i am)_

Reason can do a lot but it can’t stop facts from being true. Lucifer is here. These are not normal circumstances. Those are facts.

He has this lamplight, too, that plugs into the wall. It’s not designed for children; it’s some sleek and stylish light that he managed to find on one of their rare stops at a real grocery story, but there’s no mistaking what it really is or what it’s really for. _(averting his eyes as dean furrows a brow / averting_ _his eyes as_ _lucifer reaches into his very being / crushing Enochian into his skull / his soul / so that sam will never miss a single word /_ ** _for the rest of always_** _)_

He doesn’t talk about that, either.

Always didn’t last that long, comparatively speaking, but a year and a half with one foot in the cage and one foot out is a year and a half where time meant nothing and and he has always been there and always will be and he is nothing, nothing at all, nothing but the pain, the raw, undiluted pain, and there’s something pure in that, something raw and pure and terrible.

It’s like one of those mathematical riddles. If your soul gets flayed into bits and glued back together with hands like ocean depths every day for what feels like eternity, how long will it take before that soul is not who it was or is or ever will be? How long before it locks its door every night in the hopes that nothing can get in and that he won’t have to go out?

( ** _the rest of always_ ** ) didn’t happen. Sam knows that. He’s usually pretty sure; these days, anyway. But with Lucifer here, alive and—and in the body of the closest thing he has to a best friend ( _or at least the body he inhabits?_ ) ( _don’t think about it_ ), he can’t help but doubt a little. It would be one thing for him to just be _here_ ; it would be surreal enough to make Sam question the reality he’s managed to construct and maintain for himself these last several years. To make his certainty quake.

It would be one thing, but…

(i'll ** _be in my room_ ** **/** _it—/_ **_it’s not your room /_ ** _it’s my room)_

Sam doesn’t dare ask for or demand his space back. He doesn’t want to sound childish to his brother or to God himself, but as he sits stiffly on a bed not his own and is careful to keep his eyes trained on the door, for one selfish moment, Sam doesn’t care. He wants to be childish. He knows they need Lucifer if they’re going to stop Amara, but right now all he really wants is to banish him back to the Cage and be done with it. With him.

Sam curls in on himself a little tighter, despite himself. He plays with the palm of his hand, pressing gently on the echo of a scar from so long ago. It’s mostly faded now, but it still hurts a little when he presses down where it had been slashed. An aching prick of pain that grounds him in reality. He hasn’t used this trick in a long time, but once he does, he knows immediately. This is real. This is happening.

He leans back against the unfamiliar headboard, not muttering to himself but silently falling back on all the reassuring phrases he’s accumulated over the years. Slowly, though, his eyes close and the words slip into a language he was never meant to know. He doesn’t hear them in his own voice.

There’s no real way for a human to speak Enochian. Sam can think of the words, the high and piercing yet somehow also celestial sounds, sounds like brightness, sounds like damnable and holy, and know inherently what they mean, despite himself. He knows the words, but he can’t say them. The false lull of Lucifer’s voice resounds strangely and inhuman in Sam’s head. He can’t speak the language; only bear witness. Only remember.

Right now he’s remembering the Enochian way of saying that ( ** _no one is coming for you_** ) and ( ** _you caused this, you know_** ) and is this strange and not-his room cold? Maybe so because he’s shivering. Or maybe not.

Maybe not.

He stares at the door. The not-his door.

The lock is broken.

 

 

It’s a quiet trip back to the Bunker after Toni. He keeps sneaking furtive glances at ( _mary? his mother? mom?_ ) and looking away when she catches him. By the time they get back to the Bunker, by the time they eat, by the time he really should’ve gone to bed, instead he goes to the room she’s occupying. He hasn’t been back to his own, yet.

He brings her tea and gives her Dad’s journal and that was the whole plan, really, he didn’t think anything else through. She asked if he was okay on the car ride back, after Cas had healed him, but they haven’t—he hasn’t really told anyone about what happened. And there’s a small, small part of him that wants her to know. To care, like he knows she would if she did. That small part of him that wants to fall into her arms and sob like the child in him desperately needs to. But…he doesn’t know her that well. Or at all, really. So he settles for tea and Dad’s journal, and makes himself brave enough to say the _other_ thing on his mind.

( _mom_ / _for me_ / _just um_ / _having you here_ / _fills in the biggest blank_ )

The warmth of her embrace isn’t enough to make him forget the way Enochian causes this feeling like there’s a snake coiling around his neck, primed to squeeze tight the prey that he’s become, but he lets himself bask in it nonetheless. He doesn’t tell her about how his chest aches, he doesn’t breathe out ( _please no more)_ in the language of the Angels _,_ and he doesn’t think or speak or act. For once, in this moment, he lets go of all thought, lets his mother wrap her arms around him, and imagines that this is what he’s had his entire life. This gentle touch that’s never hurt him, not ever, not once.

Eventually, they let go. Eventually, they have to. It’s regrettable; he could feel it in her grip that she needed it as much as him, albeit undoubtedly for different reasons. But no matter how gentle and loving and good, that embrace couldn’t get rid of the serpent encircling his neck, waiting for its chance. He doesn’t think anything will be able to.

After that, he ( _Sam)_ walks back into the ( _his_ ) room. He doesn’t want to, but he knows that it will look suspicious if he doesn’t, and he doesn’t want to see the flood of pity in anyone’s eyes. So, carefully, ( _so so so carefully )_ he sits down on his ( _the_ ) bed. He pushes himself back until his head is touching the board. He focuses his eyes on the fan above him. He doesn’t think. He doesn’t.

 **(** **_you’re my little bitch in every sense of the term_ ** **) (** **_hey roomie_ ** **) (** **_upper bunk_ ** **) (** **_lower bunk_ ** **) (** **_or do you wanna share_ ** **) / (** **_it was fun while it lasted_ ** **) (** **_was it good for you_ ** **)**

Sam shivers. The room isn’t cold.

He breaks his eyes away from the fan to level them with the door. Walking in had been a little bit of a blur; the world had begun to seem that quiet sort of false to him. But he remembers walking in. He remembers staring at the handle.

And he remembers not locking the door behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Come shout at me @cagetraumsam on tumblr!


End file.
